[Deepblue]

Now available for PONG.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qCSSBEXBCbY

They look like zombies...

[Polpolion]

neat.

[Flipside]

That looks utterly ridiculous! It could just as easily be using the motions of their heads to move the bat up and down, and involve a lot cooler headgear

[IceFire]

Mmm mind control.  Interesting thing about that is that the human brain actually interfaces with the right kind of technology very well but technology hasn't got a clue about the brain.  if the brain weren't so adaptable this wouldn't even work.

[Flipside]

Must admit, for manipulating the world around us we evolved/God gave us (tick appropriate) opposable thumbs and some of the most effective gripping/manipulating systems in the natural world, known as hands. The only really effective use for 'Mind-linking' to a computer would be for programming etc, and we are an incredibly long way off from being able to automatically convert thoughts/ideas into algorhythms a computer could understand. Personally, I strongly doubt that will ever be possible.

The only advantage I can see to this particular sort of thing is in the world of prosthetics or mental illness/disease, where such devices could allow people to control mechanical legs/arms as though they were a natural limb, or control a virtual keyboard.

[Shade]

There are advantages to doing away with the need for mechanically interfacing with computers.

Don't forget that there's a (in computer terms) significant latency between a human deciding to move some limb and the command actually reaching the muscles, and them then reacting to that. If the decision simply goes directly into the computer, that's a much faster reaction time. Lets face it, the human neural network is laggy as hell

Also, in situations where moving around may be difficult, such as during high-G maneouvers in a fighter jet, just thinking is also preferable to having to move physical controls.

PS. When do we get an SCP thought-recognition build? Voice recognition is so last year!

[Descenterace]

The problem with interfacing computers with the human mind is that we're not just thinking of one thing at a time. Our conciousness is a constant bubbling stream of ideas and intentions. Having a computer single out the ones we want it to would require the user to concentrate pretty hard, and that'd add even more latency than the system would reduce.

Reading muscle movements from the motor cortex would be useful, because by then intent has become action. Writing data into the sensory cortex would also be useful, bypassing the (relatively slow) senses at the expense of reflex action (which is handled well outside the brain).

Programming via thought is, if anything, the most ridiculously unlikely use of mind-to-computer technology.

[Turnsky]

anybody who believes in mind control, raise my hand 

but that is cool, i wonder when something more cheap, portable, will come to work with photoshop one day. 

[Flipside]

IceFire raises an interesting point though, I wonder how much of this is teaching computers to interface with the mind, and how much of it is teaching the mind to interface with the computer? It's pretty similar to speech recognition in that respect.

[Descenterace]

The mind is more flexible and better able to learn than a computer, so it makes sense to make up for the computer's shortfall on the human side of the connection.

[Stealth]

you can't even compare a computer to the human mind.

[Herra Tohtori]

Yes I can. 

When it qomes to hard fast numerical processing, computers rule the living daylights out of any brain, even the autistic (idiot savant) ones that can do awesome maths in their head don't come close to nowadayss home PC when it comes to simply crushing numbers.

Living tissue brain, however, excel in cognitive skills. This includes learning new motorics; adapting to different kinds of situations; learning to understand and produce new languages and stuff like that. Also abstract thinking is something a computer can hardly do, as yet at least.

There's the comparision. 

[Mefustae]

Just you wait 'till SkyNet comes online in a few years...

[Sandwich]

There was that quantum computer that solved equations when it was turned off...

[redsniper]

^^ Huh? What? Link?

[aldo_14]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18925405.700.html

[Sandwich]

My favorite part of that article:

This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum computing. "A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says Hosten. That sentiment should have technophobes nodding enthusiastically.

[Grug]

Argh, Quantum... not on? ARrgHH!!
*head explodes*